Long Lost
by Unidentified Pie
Summary: They've all lost something, and some things must never, ever be tainted. (In which the Problem Children participate in a Gift game and one too many lines are crossed.)


**Long Lost**

"…Dad?"

She can't breathe. Her chest is tight, like there's a snake coiled around it, a constrictor wrapping tight around her lungs and squeezing the air from her body. Her breaths are short, choking gasps, because she wants so badly for this to be _real_. She digs her fingers into her palms, waiting to wake up from this dream. There's a sting as her nails bite into the skin, but that doesn't mean this is real. This can't be real, no matter how much she wants it to be.

"Yo-chan."

Her nails draw blood. She feels a crunch as they bite skin and then a familiar sticky wetness on her fingertips.

The voice is exactly the same as it was years ago. Yo gave up hope years ago on the night of the full moon, with tears in her eyes and hot on her face - but now, now the hope blooms again, brilliant and beautiful, a flower of light bright as the sun in the dark room. Fear mingles with hope so thick it's almost a prayer, and the thread of her voice breaks with the burden it must carry.

"Dad-" _Why did you leave me? Why didn't you come? Why are you here? What's going on?_

 _Where have you been?_

There's too much to say and Yo has never been too good with her words anyway; she's always been better off acting then speaking, so she allows her feet to carry her towards her father, her boots almost flying, not quite touching the ground, her breaths coming faster and heart beating hard.

She reaches out, joy tearing at her heart and pulling in her chest -

oOoOoOoOo

"What the hell?"

There's brown eyes fixed on him with a mix of earnestness and outrage, a strange mix he's only ever seen on this one girl, and another pair of violet eyes fix on him with blank irritation and mild frustration.

"Iza-nii! How could you have ditched us? Do you know how long I spent cooking your dinner and waiting for you? And when I went up you were gone! You broke your promise - now sensei's gonna haunt you for life!" Tiny cheeks are puffed out in childish fury, and Izayoi feels a wave of warmth and confusion so twisted up that he blinks, because he thought he'd never see this child again.

"Iza-nii. You didn't collect your earphones, and Suzuka dragged me all the away here thanks to you," the boy says, staring reproachfully at him through eyes that mirror Izayoi's, so much so that he feels like he's looking at his reflection. (Someone once told him that this brat could be his little brother. Same blond hair, same amethyst eyes, but Izayoi couldn't bring himself to believe it. Still, that same someone made them unofficial siblings, and these two kids are the younger brother and sister that he never had.)

"What are you doing here, brats?" Izayoi skims his own eyes over them - they look exactly the same as the last time he saw them, scrawny ten-year-olds in t-shirts and shorts, Suzuka's shirt smeared with grass stains and Homura's striped with grease.

"Is that all you're gonna say when you've broken your promise and we came all the way here to find you?" Suzuka cries, screwing up her nose in annoyance. Izayoi idly notes that there's a grass stain on it.

Usually Izayoi wouldn't respond this way, because there's every chance that Suzuka and Homura were summoned to Little Garden for their respective gifts, but this is different. This time Izayoi and the others are in the middle of a game and he's lost track of Asuka and Yo. This time the safety of his comrades depends on him getting to the root of this.

This time there's no time to relish seeing what he thought he'd lost, there's no time to soak in - even for a moment - the warmth of seeing his long lost almost-siblings.

"Yep. Hurry up and tell me why you're here," he says, because this is how he going to - has to - greet them this time. Because he thinks that they cannot possibly just happen to be here, because it cannot be such a perfect coincidence that he'd just somehow meet them at this time, in this room, during this strange game - right after they've been transported to their opponent's game board.

Suzuka and Homura cannot possibly be on this game board. He knows that they have one opponent, and that this opponent is neither Homura nor Suzuka. He knows that only the No Names are participating in this game. Izayoi knows that these brats are not in the No Names.

Which leaves the explanation that Homura and Suzuka are not here. These are simply illusions, or fakes - Izayoi frowns, because anything that can summon people from his memories is something far more intrusive, more _personal_ than he likes his enemies to be.

"Fine. Big dummy Iza-nii," not-Suzuka mutters, and she's so like the real Suzuka that Izayoi almost scowls - he hates that whatever it is that has summoned these things can read his memories to such an extent, and he hates that it is dragging up people from his old world and throwing them in his face. But he keeps a straight face - no point in letting any observers realise that he's seen through their game. "Canaria-sensei would be really mad if she found out you were being so mean," the fake Suzuka continues under her breath, and Izayoi balls up one fist in his pocket, aching to destroy these things - but he can't, not till he finds out what they're here _for_.

Then a tinkling, musical laughter comes from the corner, and he turns to catch flaxen hair and emerald eyes. Heels clack on the floor, and a white coat swings around long legs. Izayoi feels a terrible pull at his gut, eyes widening - this is not real, he tells himself. But the damn hag looks so real, so alive and-

-and the last time he saw her she was six damn feet under.

He wants to tear apart this illusion. He wants to shred the person who created this game board. He wants to _not want_ this beautiful illusion back.

He feels sick.

He hates this.

(So he balls up one fist and slams it into the illusion; watches as it fades. Lashes out in a roundhouse kick when the illusions of his not-siblings come to tug at his shirt, destroys them so utterly and completely that he should feel satisfied, but instead he just feels angry. There's fury boiling in his veins, fire thrumming under his skin.)

They have no _damn right_.

oOoOoOoOo

"Wha- What's going on?"

There's a gasp rising in her throat, and Asuka swallows before it can rise up and choke her, though there's not much else to do when the dead have apparently come back to life. She feels her eyes stretching wide, her breaths coming as doubtful, confused gasps.

"Mum? Dad?"

They absolutely cannot be here because mother is dead and father is dead and so is the child that is her would-be sibling, except that right now there's a little girl with beautiful cornflower blue irises and soft brown hair tied up in pigtails clutching at mother's hand, looking almost exactly like Asuka did at that age. And Asuka knows that this can't be real, Asuka knows that they are gone, but she's surprised by how badly she _wants_ this, her chest aching and eyes stinging with all the pain of that long-lost joy.

They are dead and they are gone and they are not real, and when Asuka gets her hands on the maker of this illusion she will _murder_ him for shoving this in her face. There are certain rules that must be followed, certain lines that must not be crossed, and Asuka knows with rigid certainty that this is one thing that must never be used against them.

"Asuka," not-father calls, and her chest _aches_ with sudden fire, because it sounds just like it always did, and this hurts, this hurts because she knows that once upon a time, in another world, this would be hers. "We've missed you, Asuka, and your sister has been so desperate to meet you," the fake continues, and Asuka feels _fury_ rise in her chest. Fire lights in her eyes, because they have no _right_. This is different from that demon lord match against Ratten, different from listening to that hauntingly beautiful music. That was a challenge from Asuka to Ratten, a test to prove her strength. That was okay, that was _right_ , because that melody reminded her of what she had wanted, of what she still wants; it had played on her desires, used her weaknesses as it was meant to do. It had been a test, and Asuka had been alright with that.

But now they are exploiting what she had and what she's lost. They are using her family against her, and this is different from wielding her desires as a weapon, different from playing on her weaknesses. This is deliberately throwing what she does not and will never have in her face, and this is _unacceptable_.

Her hands fist in whitening balls by her side, her muscles taut and tense, and her voice lashes out in command.

oOoOoOoOo

 _"Stop!"_

oOoOoOoOo

… a voice that can shatter iron and smash steel resounds through the room, crashing against Yo like a tidal wave, and she jerks away from her father, hands stilling as her feet reposition themselves. It's not that Yo doesn't care about her father - she does, and she is so happy, but she has learned all her life to protect her friends, to guard them with her life, and now Asuka's voice rings like steel in the air, humming with power and a thread of fury borne of hurt.

Her friend is angry and her friend has been hurt, and because Yo must protect her friends she must go and help, even if Asuka's gift is stronger than hers and Asuka can probably deal with it all on her own. Yo knows isolation, she knows loneliness and the pain of having no-one there, and she knows that Asuka should have someone by her side _right now._

She turns to her father, apology in her eyes - _that was my friend, I can't leave my friend_ \- and because he is her father, because this is the man who taught her that friends must be valued more than treasure, he smiles.

Yo smiles back, but this _hurts_ , a fire smouldering at her lungs and burning at her eyes. She wants to be selfish and stay with her father, wants to cling tight to the family that she had and lost and has now found again. This once, this once she wants to put herself before her friends, but that is against everything her father has taught her and against everything in her nature, so she jumps and clasps him in a quick, tight hug; holds on for a brief second as her breath stutters against his warm neck and she struggles not to cry.

The she lets go and turns, feet already moving, hair blowing back in the breeze. Her eyes are determined now, hard and unyielding, her hands clenched in fists by her sides.

She wonders why she feels like she'll never see her father again; shakes the thought from her head with the fierce denial of a person stubbornly clinging to hope.

Yo will not - cannot - lose him, not now, not again.

She finds Asuka in an adjacent room - how did she get there? They'd entered together - standing with her hands fisted in her dress, eyes blazing with a furious light. She's glaring at emptiness; Yo never thought she'd ever see a person staring at a blank wall with such rage.

"Asuka?"

Her friend whirls around, blue eyes a furious, raging fire, red dress fanning around her in her haste, the whirl of red reminiscent of blood and flame. She looks downright terrifying, a creature of fire and rage, striking the heart with red-hot panic that licks at the chest.

Yo has stared down monsters and demons, looked into the eyes of enraged tigers and battled death itself.

She does not flinch.

Asuka does, eyes widening as her hands fall with a desperate helplessness that does not suit her - a loss that does not belong in this spirit of fire and steel. Her fingers are shaking, blue eyes suddenly pained, and when she blows out a breath in a terrible imitation of her characteristic sigh, it trembles as badly as her hands. Then the loss is gone, that pain buried or thrown away or burned to ashes in her flames, the weakness tossed to the skies or maybe just locked deep in her chest. There's fire in her eyes again, dancing with anger, her hands fisting in agitation as she begins to speak.

"Where have you been?" She asks. "This game is more annoying than I thought."

And here, Yo has to answer; here, she must explain. Once upon a time she might have shook her head - she might have apologized for being slow and late and let that be the end of that. But this is her friend and Yo does not want to let that hope die, wants instead to give the story and song of her father's life and presence to Asuka, this girl who the world obeys, and make it real.

"I think I found my father," she says, and it's that _simple_ ; it's all she needs to make it suddenly sink in. It's suddenly out in the open, dancing on a tightrope and teetering on a line in the air between them. It's suddenly real and at the same time Yo realizes how this _just can't_ be real. There are things too good to be true, and things too coincidental to be real. Her father being here is one of them, and the hope falls off the tightrope, plunging into her stomach so it makes her sick. Yo knows the truth before Asuka pales to a terrible white color, eyes darkening with rage and tightening with worry, before the other girl opens her mouth to speak, before a gasping laugh fills the room with an awful sound of mockery.

She turns, and there's a man standing at the door, doubled over laughing. He's got an ugly, rat-like face and sticky-up hair, and Yo _hates_ him.

She hates him even more when he gasps out a question in a mocking, distinctly whiny-sounding voice, asking if she actually believed it was real. Her hands fist by her sides, body tensing and thrumming with _anger-shame-sadness_ -rage.

Asuka reacts before she does, voice lashing out like a whip, her command splitting the air in two.

" _Silence_!"

The man's mouth bounces shut, teeth slamming together with an audible click, and Yo trembles, just stands and shakes and tries to fight down the rage and fury and hate. Asuka's hand touches her shoulder, gentle and warm but tense with anger, and Yo thinks she knows why Asuka was so furious earlier.

Asuka had known, and Izayoi… Izayoi is smart. He'd have known too, must have found out way before she did. Yo must have been the only one who was fooled that long.

Fury lights her eyes on fire even as shame licks at her cheeks - she must be a perfect match to Asuka now, with anger making her eyes hard and wrath curling her fingers into claws. She hates him. She wants him _dead_.

Then something changes. A shift in the air, a subtle difference in the atmosphere. Yo turns quietly, sees Izayoi standing at the door. His eyes are hard, chips of stone sharp as knives, set in a pale mask of a face that might have better suited a demon.

He looks calm, but there's fury rolling from him, killing intent slamming into Yo like a wave and chilling her to her bones. If Asuka was fire then Izayoi is ice, a merciless, raging tide slamming you against rocks and crushing your bones, dragging your life from you with no second thought.

"Ah. So that's the bastard that set this place up?" Izayoi asks, voice as deceptively calm as his face. It sounds like thin ice, freezing waters lying just beneath a brittle, breaking surface, waiting to devour you.

Yo knows that he is furious, but she's angry too, and she wants the satisfaction of punching this man's face in.

"Un. It's my turn to have some fun, right?" She says, and Izayoi stares quietly at her for a long moment. She knows him well enough to know that he's thinking, mind flying through possibilities and calculations, weighing the determination in her tone with his desire to get even with the man. She sees something click in his eyes, and he dips his head in a nod.

"Fine. Beat him to _pulp_ ," he says, voice turning deadly. Yo has no doubt that if she doesn't beat the man to his satisfaction he'll do it himself. She nods, mutters a quick thanks, and Izayoi jerks his head towards the man. "Get on with it."

"Hahh… I really wanted to have a go at him, but you can have your turn this time," Asuka says, and Yo nods gratefully.

The man snorts out a laugh, and the air around him shifts. Yo gasps, heart freezing in her chest.

Her father is looking her in the eye.

She hears a ' _tch_!' behind her - "It's not _real_ , Kasukabe-san!" Izayoi yells, and she knows that, she really does, but lifting her fist against her father feels incongruous. She grits her teeth and slams forward, and when her father asks "how could you, Yo-chan?"-

-she breathes out and tells herself that it's not him. Twists her body and slams her leg into his head in a brutal kick, infusing it with all the power she can muster. It cracks against his skull with a sickening crack and for a moment she feels _guilt_ for hurting her father. Then the illusion fades to reveal the man's ugly face twisted in hideous pain, and Yo twists again to plunge her foot into his gut. She drops to the ground and glares down at the bloody man, then suddenly there's a blur of motion and the body isn't there anymore.

It slams against the wall before she even notices that it's gone. The plaster cracks and fragments and suddenly everything is splintering around them, wind whipping through Yo's hair. She blinks, and she's standing on the street, people glancing up at them and the bloody man by a street stand. They've left the game board and Izayoi is beside her, face set in a terrible mask of anger - "You're too merciful, Kasukabe-san." And it becomes clear that the man was not as thoroughly beaten as Izayoi wanted.

Asuka walks up behind them, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "Can we arrest him or something?" She asks, but it's not likely - the man hasn't violated any rules except the unspoken ones that the three of them have between them; the rule that means that they will never use their old worlds against each other.

If they'd truly had something like a loving family, if they'd truly had something that they wanted to protect with all their hearts - if they been _happy_ in their previous worlds, then they'd never have come. It's an understanding between the three of them, who will never leave the No Names or Little Garden for the very reason that this has become home and these people have become family, in a way that nothing in their old worlds was.

"Probably not," Izayoi says, looking frustrated. "Oi, ojou-sama, you look like you've seen a ghost."

"I have," Asuka snaps back, patience worn thin. Izayoi nods, shoving his hands into his pockets.

"Kasukabe-san as well?" Yo nods.

"What about you?"

Izayoi clucks his tongue, scowling. He jerks his head in a nod, eyes sharpened steel. "Bastard," he mutters. Yo and Asuka nod - there are some rules that are never meant to be broken; even the problem children understand that. Or, maybe, they understand because they are problem children. They understand because they've all lost something, because some memories are sacred - some people must never be used, and lives of loved-ones must never, ever be tainted.

oOoOoOoOo

There's silence for a second that lasts an eternity, the quiet heavy and weighted as they mull over the things that they've lost and will never have again. Izayoi's face is masked, his eyes shielded and hard, and Yo is a deadly, corpse-pale that scares her, makes Asuka wonder if her friends will be alright at all.

"You problem children!"

A shriek resounds around the street, making them all jump. Asuka turns to see Kuro Usagi pounding towards them, eyes scrunched and teary, paper fan at the ready. Her heart is pounding fast against her ribs, desperate and frantic and panicked. It's just Kuro Usagi, she tells herself, and she feels _better_ , somehow, because this-

-this is so _normal_ , this is _real_ , and the warmth she feels threatens to drown her. This is the present - that was the past. She smiles brightly, so happy, because for all that she lost her biological parents years ago this is her family in its entirety, warm and true.

"I take my eyes off you for one moment-"

Asuka laughs. She can't help it - this is her family. Her parents are dead and she'll never see her sibling, but under the bright sun and blue sky, standing with the people who make up her home, she can't feel anything but happy. Yo smiles, colour rising in her cheeks, and Izayoi's laugh rises with hers - normal again, bereft of that brittle, sharp edge his voice had held earlier. Asuka grabs the Geass roll - proof of their victory, the ticket to redeeming their prize - and as one they turn and run, laughing, with an angry blue-haired rabbit on their tails.

(And they've all lost something, or maybe they never had anything in the first place, but this is family and this is home and, well, this is better than any treasure in the world, isn't it?)

* * *

 **A/N:**

 **I hope you guys like this. I feel kinda neutral about it, really - not too happy, not too upset. Please drop me a review if you have time: Do you like it? Do you hate it? Should it be deleted and removed from existence right this very moment?**

 **Ahaha I'm trying to get better at writing, so constructive criticism would be awesome and I'd love you for reviewing because I'd really, really appreciate the time you put into it, but if you don't I'd understand too. Just... Lemme know if this sucks? 'Cuz I'd feel awful if I just kept posting terrible works on this archive.**

 **Thank you for reading and God bless!**


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